Cloud storage systems allow users to store and access data on the cloud. A cloud storage system can allow users to maintain a variety of content items stored on, and accessible from, a single cloud storage system. Some cloud storage systems allow users to share data with other users and access the data in a collaborative fashion. Moreover, some cloud storage systems may also support synchronization of copies of data across a number of client devices and servers so each copy of the data is identical and locally accessible from the client devices. The synchronization functionality can enable users to store local copies of the data on their client devices and access the local copies of the data from their client devices. The local copies of the data can be synchronized with the data on the cloud storage systems to ensure consistency between local and cloud copies of the data. The local copies of the data may provide users with faster access to the data and may allow users to access the data when their client devices are offline.
Increasingly, users are using a variety of cloud-based or cloud-backed content items and applications from different cloud-based services. Often, such cloud-based or cloud-backed content items are stored across separate cloud storage systems associated with the different cloud-based services. Many of such cloud-based applications do not operate on traditional files, instead operating on the cloud-based content items, which are typically designed specifically for the cloud-based applications. For example, the cloud-based content items may have specific formats and functionalities that may only be supported by specific cloud-based applications and services associated with those cloud-based content items.
In many cases, a cloud-based or cloud-backed content item cannot be represented in file-based storage systems, and its content cannot be rendered using other applications, such as traditional file applications, or may lose some cloud-backed features and functionalities when rendered through an application other than the specific cloud-based application associated with the cloud-based document. Disadvantageously, the increasing use of cloud-based and cloud-backed content items and applications from different cloud-based services and the lacking or limited support for such content items by a single storage solution have created an explosion of content items that are increasingly scattered across different systems and devices.